Cities eager to get federal budget boost to tackle infrastructure

Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi says his city has a backlog of $20 billion worth of projects.

Photograph by: Gavin Young/Calgary Herald
, Postmedia News

OTTAWA — Tackling raw sewage dumped in the river behind Parliament Hill, new public transit plans in Calgary, and projects to adapt to impacts of climate change are among a backlog of critical infrastructure investments that Canada’s cities hope will get a long-term boost from federal funding anticipated in Thursday’s federal budget.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said this week that the budget would build on recent multibillion-dollar investments in infrastructure from recent years, including an existing program that expires in 2014.

Transport, Infrastructure and Communities Minister Denis Lebel has also said the government favours a new long-term plan that encourages more private sector investments through partnerships on projects.

Canadian cities are also counting on a few existing multibillion-dollar annual federal investments, including a gas tax revenue sharing program and refunds for sales tax expenses, to continue. But they say that some new money, including indexation of the revenue sharing gas tax program, would go a long way toward tackling pressing needs in their regions and an estimated deficit of about $123 billion to bring their public infrastructure up to acceptable levels.

For example, Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson said his own city is ready to invest in building new underground water storage tanks to prevent overflow storm waters from pushing raw sewage into the Ottawa River.

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, who is responsible for the national capital region, has supported efforts to fund an action plan with $33 million to clean up the river, describing it as a “moral issue.”

But Watson said his city needed matching investments of $65 million from both the federal and provincial governments to proceed with building the required infrastructure.

“It’s quite frankly embarrassing in the 21st century that we have a major historic waterway like the Ottawa River, which runs right behind Parliament Hill that sees millions of litres of raw sewage – of untreated sewage going into the Ottawa River after every major rainfall,” Watson said in an interview.

In Calgary, Mayor Naheed Nenshi said his city isn’t making plans to launch infrastructure projects it cannot afford. But it has a backlog of $20 billion worth of projects, including maintenance of existing infrastructure and new plans in areas such as transportation to ease gridlock.

Nenshi told Postmedia News that some projects, including other areas of infrastructure such as affordable housing, would need federal and provincial funding in order to proceed.

“We haven’t planned to build anything with federal money at the moment just because we don’t know how much federal money there is going to be, with the exception of (revenue sharing from) the gas tax,” Nenshi said in an interview. “We’re not expecting a giant windfall of cash. That would be nice and we think those are good investments to create jobs. But what I’m really hoping for is (to see the budget) setting the conditions for predictable long-term funding, putting things in place, like the indexing of the gas tax.”

In Toronto, city officials estimate they have an existing backlog of projects requiring about $1.6 billion in investments to maintain aging drinking water, wastewater and storm water infrastructure.

Michael D’Andrea, director of water infrastructure management for Toronto, noted that its estimates don’t include expanding its capacity to prevent flooding from extreme rain events, linked to climate change.

“I need to emphasize that this is just the backlog,” said D’Andrea, who was in Ottawa this week for a conference organized by the Canadian Water Network. “I make the distinction because in most cases there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the pipes that are in the ground. It’s just that they were never designed to deal with the deluge that these extreme storms that we’re seeing more frequently, represent.”

Watson also said that Ottawa and other Canadian cities would like to see the federal government adopt a national transportation policy, an idea that has support among opposition New Democrats and Liberals, similar to other major economies in the world.

Otherwise, he said they are forced to negotiate individual deals with different levels of government for each project instead of being able to plan a long-term comprehensive strategy that helps them eliminate gridlock and improve the flow of people and goods in their cities.

“We understand that there’s only one taxpayer, and we also understand that there’s limited resources but we see these investments as both good for the economy,” Watson said.

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